Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to communication systems; and, more particularly, it relates to bridging functionality in a basic service set of a wireless local area network.
Description of Related Art
Communication systems are known to support wireless and wire lined communications between wireless and/or wire lined communication devices. Such communication systems range from national and/or international cellular telephone systems to the Internet to point-to-point in-home wireless networks. Each type of communication system is constructed, and hence operates, in accordance with one or more communication standards. For instance, wireless communication systems may operate in accordance with one or more standards including, but not limited to, IEEE 802.11x. In one network topology of an IEEE 802.11x network, an access point controls communication between one or more stations. Wire lined communication systems may operate in accordance with one or more physical layer standards including, but not limited to, MoCA, G.hn, powerline communications, optical communications, DSL, DOCSIS, etc. At the data link layer, Media access control (MAC) protocol is a layer 2 transport technology that is used ubiquitously in local area networks (LAN), enterprise networks, metropolitan networks, etc., to communicate between different nodes, computers and networks in both wireless and wire lined communication systems.
Typically, in a basic service set of an IEEE 802.11x network, only the access point is operable to bridge with nodes in another network, such as MoCA, G.hn, powerline type networks, other wireless networks, etc., using layer 2 protocols. This limits the possible topologies and range of IEEE 802.11 networks.